We also owe thanks to those with whom we had insightful conversations during the planning stages of the book: Jo Curry (Changing Lives), Mark Pierce (The Community Foundation), Nitin Shukla (Office of the Police and Crime Commissioner Northumbria), Jane Hartley (Voluntary Organisations Network North East), Steve Forster (Together Newcastle), Abu Tayeb Khairdeen (Islamic Diversity Centre), Lindsay Cross (West End Refugee Service), Sally Young (Newcastle Council for Voluntary Service), Sara Bryson (Tyne and Wear Citizens), Helen Dickinson (Newcastle City Council), Deborah Harrison (North East Child Poverty Commission) and Alison Dunn (Citizens Advice Gateshead).
Our special gratitude goes to Dr Faith Goodfellow, whose editorial assistance and support has been crucial in enabling us to deliver the book on time. As a committed voluntary worker and supporter of civil society actions, Faith has also been a valuable contributor to the debates in the workshops and beyond. We are also grateful to Stuart Hand and Alex Robson from Newcastle University’s Institute for Social Science for their administrative support, and to Emily Watt and Caroline Astley from Policy Press for their support throughout this project.
Just before the book reached the production stage, we heard the tragic and shocking news that Professor Paul Benneworth had sadly passed away. Paul generously supported our book by agreeing to write a reflective chapter on the role of civic universities. We are saddened by his sudden death and feel privileged to have worked with him on what was probably his last piece of writing in a prolific and acclaimed academic career.
Finally, the opinions expressed in the chapters are entirely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editors, the funding organisations or those who have taken part in interviews and workshops.
Lord Kerslake
The ‘austerity decade’ between 2010 and 2020 was a unique period in British economic, political and social history. Prior to that, public spending had continued to grow steadily with the development of the state’s role in protecting and promoting the well-being of its citizens, albeit with periodic reining in during economic crises. Even in the Thatcher government, the cuts were borne most by capital expenditure, notably, housing investment, rather than day-to-day spending on services.
The austerity programme introduced by the Conservative–Liberal Democrat Coalition in 2010 represented a sharp reversal of that trend. It was born out of the financial crisis of 2008 – essentially a banking crisis – the cost of responding to which had seriously impacted the country’s finances. This was common to most developed nations but was particularly significant in the UK due to the high proportion the financial services sector made up of its economy.
For the then Chancellor George Osborne, austerity was both a political and an economic agenda. The sense of crisis and urgency created – we had ‘maxed out’ on our credit cards and were heading towards becoming another Greece – served to underline a political argument that the previous Labour government had left the country in a financial mess and were not to be trusted on the economy. The reality was more complex than this, of course, but the political argument stuck.
There is an irony that, ten years on, the need to respond to another global crisis – this time, a health one – has resulted in ballooning deficits and total debt exceeding £2 trillion, compared to £1.2 trillion in 2010. Austerity temporarily reduced the rate of growth of our debt rather than paying it down.
The economic impact of austerity was arguably self defeating. In a period when demand and confidence in the global economy was low, severely reducing public spending simultaneously across the developed world added to the challenge of low growth and reduced government revenues. The ‘expansionary fiscal contraction’ vaunted by the Chancellor turned out to be a recipe for economic stagnation and led to an easing of austerity and an extension of the timescales to reduce the deficit.
Some, including former Prime Minister David Cameron, have argued that the scale of the spending reductions was not that great and the impact of austerity has been overstated. There is no doubting, though, the massive impact on local authority spending, which fell by a quarter, and the impact that this had on local communities. The reduction was even more acutely felt because of the growing demands on the adult and children’s care budgets, which together make up over half of local authority spending. The consequential impact on other services – leisure, the public realm, early years and so on – was proportionately much greater.
Deprived communities suffered a triple whammy. Being more dependent on government grant meant that the scale of the cuts was even greater. At the same time, their economies were much slower to recover from the effects of the Great Depression than other, more affluent areas. The significant reductions to benefits also had a disproportionate effect.
This timely and important book tells the story of austerity from the perspective of a particular place. There is much to learn from this comprehensive and rigorous piece of work. While the story is a tough one, there are also great positives in the way that the community responded to this enormous challenge. Particularly positive is the role of the university, which fully lived up to its civic role. Universities were fortunate to be spared the full impact of austerity – this was visited on their students in the form of significantly higher fees and loans. That story has still to be played out. Some universities took this as a sign of their intrinsic importance and invested the additional funding generated solely in themselves. Others, such as Newcastle, who were more enlightened, recognised the importance of maintaining the fabric of their local communities and invested in supporting them. I was very pleased to chair the Civic University Commission in 2019, which explored this vital civic role. Professor John Goddard was my deputy and a very valued contributor.
The timeliness of this book lies in the choices confronting the current government in dealing with the cost of COVID-19. The Prime Minister has set his face against another round of austerity but there are powerful political voices on his own side calling for just this instead of the tax rises being mooted by his Chancellor Rishi Sunak. The key decision-makers in government would do well to read this book before making their final decisions.
Islands of hope in a sea of despair: civil society in an age of austerity
Simin Davoudi, Mel Steer, Mark Shucksmith and Liz Todd
Introduction
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times … it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair. (Dickens, 1859: 1)
Charles Dickens opens his most political novel, A Tale of Two Cities, with these words. Nearly two centuries later, we cannot but agree with his suggestion that, ‘In short, the period was … like the present period’ (Dickens, 1859: 1). Such entangling of hope and despair not only defines our everyday life experiences; it is also echoed in the intellectual dilemma that is at the heart of this book. From the outset, we were searching for ‘hope in the dark’ (Solnit, 2004), with the ‘dark’ being austerity policies and their implications for people and places, and ‘hope’ being civil society’s responses to them. By the time the manuscript was ready for submission (in spring 2020), the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic was in full swing. While a full analysis of its effects is premature and beyond the scope of this chapter, we cannot but reflect on it where appropriate, especially in the conclusion. The juxtaposing of hope and despair does not suggest that hope is an unqualified positive attribute. On the contrary, as Ernst Block (1986